Over the past decade, a changing macroeconomic landscape has had a profound effect on how companies operate and compete. Simultaneously, a changing technology landscape has fundamentally changed the way companies can manage their core business processes.
Traditionally, companies have held managers accountable for the performance of each manager's respective business unit. Accountability has in turn driven managers to develop business processes and information technology (IT) infrastructure designed to boost the performance of their isolated units. In the early years of the IT evolution, advances in computer technology paved the way for managers to implement unprecedented levels of process automation. Process automation generally improved the performance of each isolated unit. In turn, the improved performance of each isolated unit generally translated into company-wide performance improvements.
However, companies continued to be challenged by an increasingly fast and complex environment. Customers continued to demand more from companies. Customers wanted more customization of products and services, and wanted products and services delivered faster, and when and where they chose. Moreover, customers were not alone in demanding more from companies. Suppliers and strategic partners also wanted tighter integration with companies' core processes, so that they could deliver faster and better with lower levels of working capital.
By the mid-1990s, companies began to realize that they must find a way to integrate their business processes end-to-end across the enterprise and with key partners, suppliers, and customers. Companies quickly recognized that they could use network technology to increase their understanding of how business processes related to each other. Companies also recognized that they could use the same network technology to improve the way business processes interacted with one another. Thus, companies turned to network technology to provide a mechanism for managing their processes horizontally to improve performance throughout the enterprise, instead of in discrete organizational units. Network technology also allowed companies to open their processes to the outside world. Customers, suppliers, and strategic partners could now integrate their own processes with those of the company.
The key to successful process integration is process communication. Processes frequently communicate with each other through messages sent over networks or internal circuits. Thus, the key to process communication is using message formats and communication protocols that other processes understand. Unfortunately, forty years of technology evolution have left most companies with a computing infrastructure that is heterogeneous, widely distributed, and increasingly complex. Single enterprises commonly operate multiple business processes through disconnected applications, middleware, servers, and operating systems. Many companies, and even many internal business units, use their own proprietary message formats and communication protocols that external processes cannot understand. Making such diverse processes and systems communicate effectively can be costly and complicated for most companies.
Companies have generally taken one of two approaches to the task of making processes communicate effectively. One approach is to “teach” processes to speak the same language and use the same protocols. In the IT context, this means re-programming processes so that all processes use a common message format and communication protocol. The other approach is to develop interpretation processes that can translate diverse message formats for other processes.
Integration servers generally attempt to implement both approaches with one comprehensive suite of tools. An integration server provides tools that allow a company to redesign processes rapidly, using standardized protocols and formats to increase process interoperability. An integration server also provides a company with tools to create an interpretation system, so that existing company processes can communicate more efficiently with each other and with external processes. Integration servers, though, are often quite complex, time consuming, and expensive. Many small and medium size companies simply do not need and/or cannot afford the level of functionality that these complex integration servers provide. Therefore, a need still exists for a method of facilitating inter-process communication that is tailored to the needs of small and medium size companies.